Still over a week from election day and already the problems are piling up. Meanwhile the vendors and their shills are making excuses and attempting to sell the voting public a line of garbage. Among the shills is a federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, that is supposed to assist the voter and, instead, has sent their chairman out on the road to defend the vendors.

"The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is a complete and utter failure. The current commissioner, Paul DeGregorio, has done nothing to instill confidence in elections or provide a lick of oversight in the deployment and use of these voting systems across the nation in the Midterm Election. In his latest interviews and editorials, he is reprehensibly doing nothing but echoing Voting Machine Company propaganda and Election Officials who choose to be apologists for them."

In a rebuttal to DeGregorios' opinion piece in the Tallahassee Democrat Avi Rubin, Johns-Hopkins Professor, computer scientist and author of "Brave New Ballot" had this to say in his blog:

"I have not seen any reason to trust our nation's voting equipment. Trusting it just because an election official says we should is not good enough for me. I want to trust a system because I don't believe it can be compromised, not because someone implies that not trusting it is not patriotic."

In The Mean Time Across The Nation...

Maryland: The state of Maryland began the week trying to recover from the revelation of last week that three disks with Diebold source code had been given to a former state delegate. They entered mid-week with revelations that Diebold had changed 'mother boards' in 4700 Direct Recording Electronic voting machines used in four counties. Diebold did this work with the full knowledge of the state Administrator of Elections, Linda Lamone, but the mention of this work was kept from the State Board of Elections and others in the state government who should have been told.

Maryland then ended the week with Governor Ehrlich urging that back-up plans be in place to account for a shortage of absentee ballots. It seems that concerned administrators like the governor and leaders of both parties in the state legislature have been calling for voters to vote absentee because they are concerned about the DRE voting machines. However, the company that prints the ballots; Diebold again, is not meeting delivery dates and there is concern that ballots will not be available.

Tennessee and Texas: Not to be outdone Hart Intercivic eSlate voting machines in Tennessee and Texas are truncating the names on the review screen. Early in the week, it was reported that voters in Tennessee were finding only first names and initials for many candidates on the review screen as they were finalinzing their votes. So "James H. "Jim" Webb - (D)" shows only as "James H. "Jim"" and in almost all cases the party of the candidates does not show.

The state Board of Elections claims to have only recently found out about this problem yet elections officials in Alexandria, one of the counties using these machines, have known about the problem since 2003. Hart promises to have the problem fixed by the elections of 2007.

Of course when voting systems are being used in more than one location the same reports show up so counties in Texas began reporting the same anomaly.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) mandates in Section 301 that in order for a voting system to be used in federal elections it must provide the voter with the opportunity to review their votes before finally casting their ballot. The fact that the review screen cuts-off (shortens) names should make those machines illegal for use. Of course that is a non-legal opinion.

Chicago, Illinois: In an exclusive (at that time) report The BRAD BLOG revealed that a hacker, and member of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, had easily found his way into the Chicago voter registration data base and that personal information of voters, including addresses and SSNs, was available for the taking. The information was immediately revealed to the appropriate authorities though there is some discussion about whether they really took the information seriously until the media got involved.

Also the city of Chicago has announced that they may withold $26M, the balance of their bill with Sequoia Voting Systems, until after the election. There is a great amount of concern that the machines will not work as advertised.

There should also be concern about the fact that some of the equipment seems to be the same as the parent company of Sequoia, Venezuelan owned Smartmatic, sells in Venezuela. Just today the Miami Heraldreported that the Treasure Department is formally investigating the ties between Sequoia, Smartmatic and Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela.

These were only the big stories for the week. If you want to check on what is happening locally watch for the news in "Daily Voting News" each day. Unfortunately I don't see much changing in elections; especially when an organization like the Election Assistance Commission is doing all they can to work against a voting system that in which we can all have confidence.

Trainwreck is right! And add this (heads up from Rawstory) from the Miami Herald about Chavez and Sequoia. (US looks for ties between Chavez, voting machines)

Here's the way my suspicious mind sees November 8th: The republicans will steal as many elections as possible (in districts with slim poll differences). In districts that the dems win, the investigation into Sequoia will suddenly burst out with information that Chavez sabotaged our election.

Rove has telegraphed his punch, and now it’s up to all of us to call BULLSHIT on his BULLSHIT.

Speaking on a recent NPR interview, Rove stated that he actually sees upward of 36 different polls – many of which predict a GOP victory in the coming elections.

He’s simply lying.

He’s lying to create a mindset of doubt – in order to better enable the theft of the election through means other than the ballot box. The GOP has effectively hijacked America. Bush did not win the election in 2004. Exit polls don’t lie…but Rove does.

Call it to the attention of the media. Let the media know that we WILL NOT TOLERATE another stolen election, nor will we tolerate their complicity in disparaging the validity of Exit Polling as a valuable check against election fraud.

CNN’s Jeff Greenfield was interviewed about the forthcoming elections, and his parting comment at the end of the segment was what would have appeared to be an off-handed disparaging remark about the reliability of Exit Polls.

Greenfield was/is shilling for Rove – and this was a TALKING POINT ordered up by Rove. “Exit Polling” had not been part of the prior discussion, but was something that he slipped in at the end of the segment – as if ordered to do so.

DON’T LET THEM SWIFTBOAT “EXIT POLLING”

Learn about the company Rove has hired to conduct and report fraudulent exit poll results – which will stand in sharp contrast to all other exit polls:

The GOP has employed a firm called Penn, Schoen, & Berland to skew exit poll results in the past in order to achieve their own political ends. They are on Rove’s payroll:

November 2, 2004: Overcoming a six point exit-poll advantage by Senator John Kerry, George Bush is re-elected President. Several statisticians have calculated the probability of this anomaly as one in a million --- in effect, impossible.

President Bush said Friday the United States does not torture prisoners, commenting after Vice President Dick Cheney embraced the suggestion that a dunk in water might be useful to get terrorist suspects to talk.

Waterboarding is a type of torture used in coercive interrogations or for punishment. The modern form of the practice simulates drowning and produces a severe gag reflex, making the subject believe his or her death is imminent while ideally not causing permanent physical damage.

The word torture is commonly used to mean the infliction of pain to break the will of the victim or victims. Any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, deterrence, revenge, punishment, sadism, information gathering, or to obtain false confessions for propaganda or political purposes may be called torture.

Orwellian stunt designed to explain election fraud AND justify invasion of Venezuela – all in one swoop.

SORRY – KARL – TOO FUCKING OBVIOUS!

U.S. digs for vote-machine links to Hugo Chávez

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

In the debate about the reliability of electronic voting technology, the South Florida parent company of one of the nation's leading suppliers of touch-screen voting machines is drawing special scrutiny from the U.S. government.

Federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The GOP has employed a firm called Penn, Schoen, & Berland to skew exit poll results in the past in order to achieve their own political ends. Watch out for this firm’s exit poll results in this years elections. They are on Rove’s payroll:

Tracy Costin, the former owner of polling company DataUSA Inc., entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit mail fraud for fabricating the results of polls the company conduct on behalf of, among others, President Bush in 2004.

...we have Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and FOX News hurting the nation with their lies, including how great we're doing economically, keeping the truth from the American public...what do Rush and Hannity have to say about this GAO warning???

...we have our democracy stolen by evote machines made by Republican donor companies...

...we have revoked Habeus Corpus, where Bush is judge and jury, and people disappear into the night with no trials or charges...like Stalin's gulag...

...we have Republicans making laws so they cannot be sued for torture...thereby PROVING we are torturing or they wouldn't make the damn law...

...and we have the corporate MSM giving an unchallenged forumm to these liars...

Your life may depend on chucking cable and getting DISH for LINK TV & FSTV...the only place on TV where they aren't lying to us...

Venezuela has a national election coming up December 3, 2006. Bu$$hco is looking for any reason to discredit Chavez here in America and Venezuela. Again team bu$$h/cheney/rove/rummy et al are illegally spending millions of US taxpayer monies to throw the election toward a far right-wing candidate who would be more pliant toward American petroleum and corporate interests. Fascists and Corporatists act to exclusively enrich only the upper classes,.. Chavez distributes the common wealth to a broader spectrum to the inclusion of the lower/poorer classes,.. the power brokers in America disdain Chavez for doing this.

We continue to meddle in Venezuelan elections to install an extreme right-wing President,..

Snip:

According to AEI's website, the event will be hosted by Roger Noriega, a fellow at AEI and former State Department official, whose deep dislike for Venezuela's popular president is unmistakably personal. Noriega happens to have been the one who deliberately lied to the US media about Chávez's phony resignation during the 2002 coup. (Noriega's media ploy, though subsequent White House press statements backed him up, reportedly angered then Secretary of State Colin Powell because Powell himself didn't believe that Chávez had resigned.) Noriega is also tied to organizations like USAID and the International Republican Institute which have funneled millions of US taxpayer dollars – in an era of record budget deficits – to political parties that oppose President Chávez. Presumably, Borges will be collecting a fat campaign check signed by the US taxpayer.

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

More on Hugo Chavez,.. his anti-American,..anti-Imperialism is currently being played out in the United Nations.

Bu$$hco wants Chavez silenced,.. he is not a cheerleader for the ultra rich,.. they would like to see him pushed back into the background. With Hugo Chavez gone American industry can resume raping the natural resourses from the southern hemisphere with little need for just compensation for the natural resourses taken.

I can't help but believe this e-voting sham is the greatest scandal in the country's history, but Americans are taking to it very slowly. This is the kind of chicanery that created the revolution this country was founded on, and I cannot help but think that, if it is not brought down soon, that things will eventually come to the same kind of head that they once did before, in 1776.

As JFK said, in one of my favorite quotes: "Those who make peacegul revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable". I think he'd roll over in his grave to think that his quote would ever become applicable to his own country's fate.

I can't help but believe this e-voting sham is the greatest scandal in the country's history, but Americans are taking to it very slowly. This is the kind of chicanery that created the revolution this country was founded on, and I cannot help but think that, if it is not brought down soon, that things will eventually come to the same kind of head that they once did before, in 1776.

As JFK said, in one of my favorite quotes: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable". I think he'd roll over in his grave to think that his quote would ever become applicable to his own country's fate.

["To begin with, in the United States there must be a powerful demolition of the old political order: We need elections where all votes are cast and counted. The campaign against voter repression is the essential civil rights struggle of our time, even though most progressives don't seem to realize it yet. Prevailing will require fundamental reform such as the introduction of nationwide vote-by-mail (the Oregon system). Without that, and also many relentless prosecutions, nothing else will be achieved".---JAMES K. GALBRAITH March 30, 2006 "Taming Global Capitalism Anew"---(April 17, 2006 issue of The Nation Magazine)
James K. Galbraith, chair of the board of Economists for Peace and Security, teaches at the University of Texas and is senior scholar with the Levy Economics Institute]
====================================================
"A Better Election System" By Paul Magill Smith 3-8-2K6

The latest round of corruption in our government stems from the biggest executive crime of all. In collusion with the Supreme Court our glorious president/dictator/tyrant "stole" the election of 2000, with another criminal (Tom DeLay) "stole" a majority in the house through re-districting, and with corporate henchmen in Diebold & Company "stole" another presidency in 2004. Whether you agree with the presidential election results or not there were statistical anomolies, and thousands of citizen complaints that should have required greater scrutiny & inquiry.

Since the 2000 presidential election our national coffers have been looted to the tune of trillions of dollars, and with almost three more years to go in this theocratic oligarchy there is still much more damage to come. Our financial ruin, through an unsustainable balance of trade deficit, massive fiscal deficits, and a consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few individuals & corporations, bodes ill for generations of Americans to come---IF there are generations to come after the effects of global warming, a state of perpetual global war, and depleted uranium have their way with us.

A bleak picture-yes-but there is cause for hope. Going under the assumption most Americans have a streak of common sense, and an inbred respect for 'the rule of law', the first step toward retrieving our now stolen democracy is restoring honesty to our electoral process. Accountability, verifiability, and transparency are not luxuries; they are necessities if democracy in America (the world) is to be viable.

With these considerations in mind I propose an entirely new election system for this country. It uses, for the most part, existing equipment & technology already in place throughout the entire country, and would only require the development of some software. Election expenses would be reduced, election theft would become a thing of the past, and national referendums on key issues would become a possibility. The 'will of the people' would become king, instead of the preferences of King George/Dick/Karl/Donald/ etc.

So here is the idea. Currently in the US there are 368,000 ATM machines. They are easy to use (even from a car), provide a paper trail, accessible by use of a card with security features, and very accurately keep track of billions of transactions every month (a 1% accuracy error, which is acceptable for most elections, would land bankers out of their jobs & very likely jailed).

OK, so the first part deals with voting at ATM's, except when they are being used for elections they would become AVM's (Automatic Voting Machines).

The issue of verifiability would be very simple also. Since each registered voter would receive their own magnetic credit-card type, individually numbered card (requiring a personalized identification number-PIN-to make it work), each voter would have a specific number, and security that they were the only one who had the secret code to access the AVM. Following an election their unique number, along with the way their vote was recorded would be published in the local paper & on the internet at a specific site. Since all the voter numbers could be placed in numerical order it would be easy to scan down the list to your number and verify your vote was cast for the person you wanted it to be.

If it was an election with candidates in a number of positions your vote would read as a multi-character number. An example would be 1324113 in which you voted for 7 different people for as many electable posts. The AVM would have given you a hard copy receipt to be used to verify against the posted list.

Elections would start on Friday at 6 PM and end on Sunday at Midnight, eliminating long waiting lines that tend to discourage/disenfranchise voters.

ATM's are already linked to central computers, so collection of the total votes from all the machines should present very little problem. Election officials would be necessary at these institutions to verify all the votes were retrieved, but the elimination of officials at each precinct polling place would eliminate much of the costs of holding elections as with our current system. As a further dis-incentive to election fraud, caused by computer tampering, if a certain percentage or number of voters provide their AVM receipt to election officials, and their vote code doesn't match that of the central computers, the election results are AUTOMATICALLY declared void, resulting in a new election.

Since I have only begun thinking & writing about this new system I am sure there are many details to be considered and worked out. The bottom line is the current election system is broken, with millions of Americans lacking confidence in the extant election process & results.

As the world's oldest democracy, holding our 'system' up as a model for budding or want-to-be democracies around the globe, it behooves us to make sure our own system is the best we can possibly make it, and the one others will wish to emulate. "Do as I say" is not good enough. If America is to 'talk the talk' we must 'walk the walk' also.